80s One-Hit Wonders Fun Facts | 15-Minute Walking Workout | 62

This 15-minute walking workout is packed with 80s one-hit wonder stories and facts that make the time fly. The actual 80s songs aren't included (you know - copyright), but the stories behind them? So interesting. 

You can walk outside or at home on a treadmill or walking pad. Either way, you’ll get 1500+ steps in without staring at the clock.

This is one of those walks where you’ll look up and go… wait, we’re already done?

There’s background walking music to keep your pace, and a bell at the halfway point so you know when to turn around (if you want to). 

And because this never stays completely on track (obviously)… you’ll hear about

• the time I confidently asked for “You Dropped a Load on Me” at a record store (yes… really)
• why Michael Jackson randomly shows up in one of the biggest one-hit wonder songs
• the phone number that disrupted people’s lives (hi, Jenny)
• the weirdest music videos you forgot existed
• and the one 80s song I absolutely cannot stand (sorry in advance)

Plus we uncover sneaky details about:

• Take On Me
• Come On Eileen
• Safety Dance
• 99 Luftballons

…and a few more that will instantly transport you to the most amazing decade of all time (fight me if you don't agree).

So if you need:

• a quick walk
• a mood boost
• something fun to listen to
• or just a reason to get up and move

Grab your shoes. Let's get walking.

And if one of these songs gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day… you’re welcome.

What is your favorite 80s one-hit wonder? Send me a message @yourwalkingpodcast and let me know!

Transcript

0:05

Start out at an easy warmup pace. You can do this, walk outside or inside on a walking pattern or treadmill. Let's get those legs moving. So I have a really long history of completely butchering song titles, and they're super wrong. They're aggressively wrong, and I still butcher song titles to this day. When I was teaching aerobics in the eighties, I marched into Wherehouse Music and I confidently asked for a 12 inch version of the Gap Band's "You dropped a load on me." Now, I was still kind of fresh from Norway, I didn't get all the slang yet, and the guy behind the counter and my boyfriend who was with me, they just lost it and they couldn't stop laughing, and I was almost crying because I didn't know why they were laughing at me. I just wanted the 12 inch version of that song. Turns out that the lyric is bomb. You dropped a bomb on me, not you dropped a load on me. So there's a little bit of a difference there. And 40 years later, we still laugh about that. Almost 40 years. There was Journey's "Open Arms," and I really thought it was broken arms. I come to you with broken arms. We had a whole serious conversation, my boyfriend and I, whether Steve Perry's girlfriend's dad was in the Mafia, and he broke Steve's arms because he'd messed with his daughter. So between the misunderstood lyrics and songs that randomly take over our heads and our minds, today's walk is all about the eighties one hit wonders. Yay. You know me. Eighties, queen. We are the eighties champions. And it will be a little bit more like VH-1's popup videos 'cause I love all the little details that we can learn on this walk. As you probably know, I can't use copyrighted music in the background here, so I'm just going to use stock music with a little eighties spin. And we're going to just follow the beat and we're going to learn all about the one hit wonders of the eighties. Take a deep breath in, just settle in now. Okay, now we're going to pick up a little bit of pace. It's a nice steady walking rhythm. Find that beat. It's a little bit of a groove right here. Relax those shoulders. Find that pace. Step, step, step. And breathe. Number one. Let's see if you know what song these lyrics are from. All I want is to be left alone in my average home. Rockwell. Somebody's watching me. I can't hit those notes. Rockwell is Barry Gordy's son and he used a fake name so people wouldn't judge him on his Motown family connections. His dad told him that the demo was just okay. So he pretty much prayed for a hit and he got it probably thanks to his friend Michael Jackson who sang the chorus a favor 'cause he was hanging out at Rockwell's house. And those creepy lyrics, they came from Rockwell, scaring his girlfriend by mashing his face against his shower glass while she was in there. Kind of like psycho."Mickey" Tony Basil. It was originally called Kitty and was done by UK boy band, but Toni flipped the gender on it and what's kind of cool is that Toni was 38 years old when this became a hit, so that totally broke the pop star age rule of the eighties. Tony was already a massive choreographer and she was working with people like David Bowie. And that cheerleading outfit in the video was not a costume. It was her actual real cheer uniform from Las Vegas high School. Pick up a little pace again. Now little faster. Settle in. Find that beat. Pump your arms a little bit more. Maybe groove with me. Or you can rock with you like Michael Jackson, but that's not a one hit wonder. I don't know my kids' cell phone numbers, but I do know this song 8 6 7 5 3 0 9. Some of you know it as Jenny or Jenny, Jenny. Jenny's not a real person. The band just picked some random, catchy string of numbers. But people who actually own that phone number in different area codes got flooded with nonstop prank calls. Remember back in the day when we didn't have caller ID? And a school in Massachusetts had the number and students kept calling it to ask for Jenny. Jenny, Jenny. Stay with it now. This was a surprise to me. Come On Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners, knocked Michael Jackson's Billy Jean out of the number one spot when it came out. But unlike Jenny, Eileen was a real person. She was a childhood friend that the lead singer had a massive crush on when he was just a 13 years old. And this is kind of gross. Those dirty denim overalls they wore in the video, they wore those exact same clothes on tour and refused to wash them because they wanted to look like authentic laborers. Ew. Can you imagine? Imagine what they smell like the whole tour, especially sweating under the lights. So I know this next song from the very first key, but I'll give you a little hint. S-A-F-E-T-Y Safety Dance. Yep. Men Without Hats, safety Dance. This song only exists because the lead singer got physically thrown out of a club for pogo dancing, and that's like a protest song saying, let us dance how we want."We can dance if we want to. We can leave you friends behind." The video looks like something from a crazy Renaissance fair and the guy playing the jester in the video was Mike Edmonds and he actually played an Ewok in Star Wars Return of the Jedi. When I was teaching Spin, I used to play this song and we would go, "We can spin if you want to, if your friends don't spin, and if they don't spin, then there no friends of mine." Okay, we're going to hold onto that pace so we could go just a little bit faster if you're feeling up to it. Steady now. Follow the music. Yeah, why not? Let's go faster. Feel a push. First. We're going to roll our shoulders backwards, big rolls, and roll our shoulders forwards. Stay with that pace. You're going to squeeze your glute when you walk. You're going to roll through the foot. This song is near and dear to me, being a Norwegian. A-Ha's "Take On Me." Now I know technically they're not like a one hit wonder 'cause they did have a couple of other semi hits, but that was their biggest hit. I'm going to include it. I just watched a documentary recently about this and the song Take On Me flopped twice before it became a hit. The keyboard player originally wrote that famous riff when he was just 15 years old. They called the very first demo of the song, "Lesson One," and then when they finally made that famous comic book video, it took 16 weeks of tracing 3000 individual frames by hand to get that look. And that was one of the coolest videos I've ever seen. Wasn't it? You remember that? Just watching MTV back in the day and you saw that video come on. Okay. Get ready. We're just going to go a little bit faster for few seconds. Get ready and pick up some pace. Follow the music. Follow the beat. Feel that push now. Pick it up. A little bit faster. Pick it up. Pick it up. You're like picking what? What am I picking up? Slow it down just a little bit. Back to that brisk pace. My German is rusty. 99 Luftballons belongs from Nena. Remember her? This sounds incredibly upbeat, but it's actually about 99 balloons accidentally triggering a nuclear war. Go a little bit faster now. Going to hit a little interval here. Feel that push. Hold onto it. Push it. It's an interval right here, a little burst and back to brisk, but not a sprint. The guitarist got the idea when he was at a Rolling Stones concert in West Berlin, he saw a bunch of balloons released into the sky and wondered what would happen if they floated up over the wall and into Soviet territory. Some of the lyrics are translated more poetically instead of more directly translated. It's like when I translate directly from Norwegian to English, it often doesn't make very much sense. Keep that brisk pace going now, and breathe. Try not to drop your speed. Use those arms. If you're on a treadmill and you have an incline, you can make it a little bit higher. We're going into a rapid fire, lightning round."Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the waves. This is really cool. For 10 solid years, this song was making the band $1 million every single year just from being used in commercials and movies, and they eventually sold the rights for$15 million and completely cashed out. Can you imagine?"Turning Japanese" by the Vapors. There is a little bit of a risque urban legend about what this song means, and the band swears this is literally just about taking a photograph of someone and freezing them in time. Sure, Becky."Whip It" by Devo. Everyone thought this was about BDSM, but it wasn't. The singer wrote it as a joke, making fun of those cheesy "you can do it" motivational speakers." I Ran" by Flock of Seagulls. I used to have Flock of Seagulls hair in the eighties. The lead singer was actually hairdresser before the band took off. I guess that's why his haircut defied that gravity. He used a half a can of hairspray every single show. Maybe I should post a picture of my Flock of Seagulls heard on my Instagram. Let's check it out @yourwalkingpodcast. Pictures came and broke your heart. Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. Of course, I talked about that in my last eighties walk. It was the very first video on MTV and the two guys in the band later went on to produce massive hits for other artists, because the eighties is not complete without Video Killed the Radio Star. Of course, some of the biggest one hit wonders were Kajagoogoo. Remember that?"Too shy, shy." We're going to slow it down a little bit more to a steady, slower pace. We're still moving. Settle in, shake out those hands. Just cruising along. Still working, just not quite as brisk. I want to know why everyone in the eighties was so obsessed with the world ending. Modern English "I Melt With You" is another track. It feels like a sweet love song. It's actually about a couple being together while a nuclear bomb drops and it barely charted the first year, but kept showing up in commercials and movies and eventually became more of a hit. I don't know if you know this one, Thomas Dolby."She Blinded Me With Science.""She blinded me with science. Boop boop." And that random guy yelling "science" in the background was a real British scientist. His name was Magnus Pike. He got unexpectedly famous for it and hated it because people would just yell science at him on the street. Soft Cell's Tainted Love. I don't why I cannot stand that song. But it was originally a 1960 soul song that they slowed down and made a little darker. And it stayed on the charts for 43 weeks. Maybe that's why I don't like it, because maybe it was overplayed. Stay with that pace. Take a deep breath in through your nose. I didn't mean to shout at you just now. And exhale through your mouth. Shoulders are down and relaxed away from your ears. Your feet are relaxed in your shoes. You're not gripping the bottom, not gripping the soles. Settle into the groove. We're going to slowly bring that pace down. So I'm too shy, shy to be a maniac on the dance floor. Because you spin me right round baby. Sometimes I'm all alone like Tarzan boy. Slow it down a little bit more and look at all these rumors, they're surrounding me every day. And as our walk ends, don't you forget about me and hit follow so you don't miss the next episode because we're going to rock onto Electric Avenue. If you need a friend, don't look to a stranger. You know, in the end I'll always be there. On social media @yourwalkingpodcast. Don't forget to stretch. Drink some water, walk around a little more if your heart rate is still higher. And I'll see you next time.